The First Time I Saw Him by Laura Dave
I was thrilled to see this sequel coming out and Laura Dave absolutely nailed it, once again! We pick up exactly where we left off, and while most sequels spend the first 30 pages or so catching you up to the story, she does not waste our time, and we are thrown right into it. Not to worry, though, I remembered only the bare bones of the first book, and by telling this story on a dual timeline (now and years before), you get caught up bit by bit. Just like the first book, you will be racing through the pages to find out what happens next.
The First Time I Saw Him by Laura Dave, (List Price: $29, Scribner, 9781668002964, January 2026)
Reviewed by Allyn Oliver, The Bluffton Bookshop in Bluffton, South Carolina
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“There were many moments when I wondered if I was making Margo too despicable. But I hoped that building out her backstory and giving her a wicked sense of humor would generate some empathy and induce readers to stick around. Because yeah, she does some horrible things and has some appalling views, but funny people are usually at least a solid hang! She’s also self-made, having come from humble, somewhat tragic beginnings, which I personally admire about her and hoped others would, too.
“I worked on a gubernatorial campaign in high school and fell hard for the drama and passion that surround elections. Nostalgic for shows like The West Wing and Scandal, I began weaving together an unlikely love story between opposing candidates forced to confront their past…This novel is about the experiences that bind us together and the differences that tear us apart as two people navigate the tension between love and ambition…To be loved is to be seen but for Tess and Grant, the person they love sees the world very differently.
“[It’s] often not what you get around stories that involve African Americans. Most of us cannot trace our histories all the way back to a slave ship or to a particular country in Africa because the records of the enslaved were not recorded in detail. So it’s incredible and very powerful that these descendants know the actual stories of their ancestors that came from Africa.
I first saw a bog body in the British Museum, and I just thought, How amazing. This is a real person who lived and breathed 1000s of years ago, and I can still see him, and we can learn so much about him and his life, from his body and from studying him. And his people buried him in this place where I think they knew that he would be preserved, and I can imagine them, you know, hoping that maybe we would understand them. One day, I visited the bog where he was found. I really learned so much from that landscape, which today is quite degraded from its former state, but it’s still breathtaking to see, and there are spots of real biodiversity that could come back if protected properly. So I really got obsessed with bogs themselves and with the moss that creates the bogs, and the way it can operate as a colony, not as a single organism. And I really wanted in this book to talk about the non human world. I think that people tend to think that we always drive events on the earth, but there are many other organisms here that have huge impact on us, in our lives, and I really wanted to share that too. 